Re: House wireless/wired router: choices? Plus wireless neophyte questions.
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 09:15 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 10/03/08 00:46, Chris Metzler wrote:
> > Hi folks. Been a looooong time since I've posted to this list.
> >
> > I have exactly zero experience with wireless -- I've never owned a laptop,
> > and have just never needed it. My gf, as part of her job, needs to bring
> > home a laptop with that other OS on it, and wants wireless access to
> > our broadband.
> >
> > We currently have a DSL connection: phone to DSL modem, ethernet out the
> > back of the DSL modem to our one desktop machine. I'm assuming that what
> > I want is a wireless router with LAN ports: ethernet cable from the DSL
> > modem to the wireless router, and ethernet cable from the wireless router
> > to the desktop machine while her laptop talks to the router by wireless.
> > We have a static IP address; I'm presuming that this wired/wireless router
> > will need to be configured with that address, and then will do NAT with
> > the desktop and the laptop.
>
> Yes. My router gets a routable "external" IP address from the ISP,
> but I had to *also* give it an "internal", non-routable IP address
> (which I chose to be 192.168.1.251).
>
> Look for the Linksys WRT54GL. Natively runs Linux, and replacement
> OSs (like OpenWRT or Tomato) can easily be installed.
>
<--deleted discussion on setup questions-->
I had some trouble finding the above referenced router at a local
retailer (I needed the HW ASAP, couldn't wait for freight delivery).
I found that Netgear also makes a Linux kernel based router, the
WGR614L. It is listed at about $80 US, and can use the DD-WRT Open
Source firmware, probably others.
Though I've not yet tried to do anything with the alternate drivers yet,
I expect to do so soon. But even the basic Netgear fw and function are
good.
The main drawback is there's no 802.11n support. For me, not an issue,
all my equipment was G anyway.
This unit (and others) allows you to associate a particular IP address
with a MAC address, so the same IP is always given to the device. This
allows you to have your hosts file setup for names and still use the
laptop in any DHCP environment with changes.
Bob McGowan
Reply to: